"Whoa, what, whhooooah!"

Author's Rating:

Pros: Merlin and Archimedes, two of Disney's most likable creations

Cons: An annoying protagonist, bad songs and too many moments that are cute for cuteness' sake

Author's Review
When I was a kid, my family only had the Disney Channel for a few months, during the summer of 1985. And they showed three of their mid-range animated classics -- Alice in Wonderland, Robin Hood and this movie -- over and over. So even today, I'm more familiar with those three Disney movies than almost any other ones. I love the first two, but I have mixed feelings about Sword in the Stone, which seems to try extra hard to push the formula-Disney cute-kid buttons.

The protagonist, Wart, is a gangly 12-year-old kid in medieval England. His older brother is the family pet, groomed for knighthood and incredibly stupid and boorish to boot. Wart, on the other hand, does the family chores and generally manages to bungle things up. (He's frequently seen falling, tripping and losing equilibrium in other ways that make him cry out, "Whoa, what, whhooooah!") But the kid is destined for greatness, and the path is set in motion while Wart wanders into the woods after a stray arrow and literally falls into one of the chairs at Merlin's kitchen table. (Yeah, there's a definite "Whoa, what, whhooooah!" during that sequence.)

Merlin is the coolest thing about the movie -- I thought that when I was 7, and I still think it now. He's a quirky old sorcerer with a talking pet owl (Archimedes) and a knack for making his everyday chores easier through magic. There are two interesting sequences early on where, first he brings his sugar bowl to life and later has all his belongings pack themselves into his suitcase, shrinking them down as they go. ("How else would you get all of this into one bag, I'd like to know?") Merlin quickly agrees to educate the lad, for reasons undetermined except to say they serve the plot.

The Sword in the Stone is one of those Disney movies crammed to the gills with filler. The songs aren't very interesting, and any scene with the bad-luck wolf (read: Wile E. Coyote knockoff) is to be avoided. On top of that, each scene with Merlin changing himself and Wart into animals goes on too long. I personally am hard-pressed to come up with a Disney scene more annoying than the one where the lovestruck girl squirrel won't leave Wart alone. ("You're a him, and she's a girl. It's a natural phenomenon," Merlin says with a chuckle. He changes his mind later when he inadvertently attracts a lonely fat-chick squirrel.) And let's not forget about Madame Mim.

But I like the movie overall. I like the pithy advice Merlin drops in from time to time, I enjoy the Archimedes character, and the blowout battle with Mim is fun to watch. This is the kind of light-hearted Disney movie where the villain only gets cuckolded in the end, not killed. It also has a taste of something that would become quite annoying in later Disney films -- contemporary cultural references. Yes, Merlin has been to the future and back. 1963, to be exact.

The bottom is, small children will love Sword in the Stone, and adults will find humor in it from time to time. It fills the Disney niche, but there's much better out there.